Book Review: Roopa Unnikrishnan's The Jasmine Murders is more than a whodunnit set in a quiet town with many secrets
The Arjuna Awardee athlete turns fiction writer as she presents a layered, unputdownable mystery thriller. Here's more about this period novel set in Tamil Nadu
In the quiet setting of Tamil Nadu’s backwaters, a Malayalam-speaking IPS officer gets posted. With his newly wedded wife in tow, his story reveals like a deceptively tepid premise made in the 1960s. The book The Jasmine Murders wastes no time, as it opens with a chilling line: "That’s a head he’s carrying." Right from here, the novel sheds any veil of restraint, signalling that beneath the stillness of this little hamlet lies a history soaked in blood, silence and complicity.
Our protagonists Jayan and Uma navigate cultural dissonance, language barriers and the unsettling undercurrents of an unfamiliar town in a gripping noir that spirals into a fast-paced trail of burglaries and murders. The pleasure of reading the novel lies not just in uncovering what happened, but in how the clues emerge obliquely, through uncomfortable silences, stolen glances, and confessional recollections.
This is author Roopa Unnikrishnan’s first foray into fiction, and her prose is eloquent, yet succinct and sharp. She allows the narrative to move briskly and binds it tight in a 229-pager. As the events unfold — over a precisely defined window of 24 days between December 1 and December 24, 1964 — the book delivers one revelation after another without indulgence. Its finite pacing lends the story a claustrophobic urgency as if time itself is pressing in on the characters. Meanwhile, the town itself emerges as a character that is watchful, secretive and complicit.
While the book may present itself as a crime novel flirting with the whoddunit genre, its ambitions are broader. Beneath the investigation runs a layered feminist subtext that examines the power of the patriarchy and the sinister violence that still inflicts upon women in a society that normalises or even reinforces silence.
{{/usCountry}}While the book may present itself as a crime novel flirting with the whoddunit genre, its ambitions are broader. Beneath the investigation runs a layered feminist subtext that examines the power of the patriarchy and the sinister violence that still inflicts upon women in a society that normalises or even reinforces silence.
{{/usCountry}}This is true as the novel also gestures towards a country that was once grappling with the aftershocks of the British colonisation and the subsequent Partition trauma. Echoes of colonial humiliation, communal violence, and inherited rage show their ripple effects through the story, revealing how moments of collective frenzy and mob mentality can turn lifelong friendships into fatal enmities.
This reviewer here feels that neither the justice served here is clean nor is the truth comforting. What remains instead is the jasmine-scented calm that tries to mask the history that refuses to stay buried and crimes that get more and more convoluted, even under the dust of a mundane life in a quiet hamlet.
Title: The Jasmine Murders
Author: Roopa Unnikrishnan
Publisher: Aleph Books Company
Price: ₹799
